"I accept, with great pleasure," he murmured.
CHAPTER XXV
Sonia had the air of one steeped in an almost ecstatic content. On her return from the roof garden she had exchanged her wonderful gown for a white silk negligee, and her headdress of pearls for a quaint little cap. She was stretched upon a sofa drawn before the wide-flung French windows of her little sitting-room at the Ritz-Carlton, a salon decorated in pink and white, and filled almost to overflowing with the roses which she loved. By her side, in an easy chair which she had pressed him to draw up to her couch, sat Lutchester.
"This," she murmured, "is one of the evenings which I adore. I have no work, no engagements—just one friend with whom to talk. My fine clothes have done. I am myself," she added, stretching out her arms. "I have my cigarettes, my iced sherbet, and the lights and murmur of the city there below to soothe me. And you to talk with me, my friend. What are you thinking of me—that I am a little animal who loves comfort too much, eh?"
Lutchester smiled.
"We all love comfort," he replied. "Some of us are franker than others about it."
She made a little grimace.
"Comfort! It is my own word, but what a word! It is luxury I worship—luxury—and a friend. Is that, perhaps, another word too slight, eh?"
He met the provocative gleam of her eyes with a smile of amusement.
"You are just the same child, Sonia," he remarked. "Neither climate nor country, nor the few passing years, can change you."